Honestly, I'm not sure if this is a great title for this game but this game itself is a winner. It works particularly well to corral an unruly group and bring them back to focus. It works equally well with large and small groups. It also can be played with many different levels. This is an "everyone for himself" type game - no teams. The procedure is simple: - hand out white boards and markers to the class. Then write a question on the board based on the vocabulary you are currently studying. For example, in the the last chapter, we learned words for warm and cold. I wrote on the board, "Quid est frigidus?" Students then write their answer on the board. My students write in English but a more advanced group could write in Latin. Then, at your signal, everyone holds up the boards. So for example, your students might write: ice, snow, this classroom, the refrigerator etc. Everyone who has an answer that correctly answers the question gets one point. Everyone that has a unique answer that answers the question gets two points. Here are some other questions to try for students in a Level I course:

It is important to keep the questions open ended. This is not a reading comprehension check. Students really enjoy sharing their ideas about even simple concepts - what is big, small, etc. They take pride in coming up with original answers. Once there is only one or two correct answer based on the story, the whole activity falls flat. The best whiteboard game for answering questions that have limited answers is "Tour of the Empire" which is described under "Drill Games" on this page.

Tips to Make this Game Work:

My number #1 rule is that none of the answers can be a person in the class or a person in the school. It's just too easy for students to be snarky but "just kidding!" when they can answer with people in the school community. Fictional people, celebrities and politicians are fair game.

Two answers are declared the same (one point answers) when they have the same word in the answer. For example, to the question, "Quid est frigidus?," the answers "snow" and "snow on the ground" are declared the same and each awarded one point.

Only one answer per question on the whiteboards - otherwise it takes too long to sort the original answers from the repeats.

At least in middle school, the game has a 20- 25 minute run time before it gets old.

Like all whiteboard games, students keep their boards down until I yell "Tollite tabulas!" That way students can't change their answers or quickly write someone else's answer.